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is pinterest ruining your life?

I have been researching Bullet Journals. Go on, google it, 99% of what you find will not be practical planners which keep you on track but whopping great works of art How anybody gets things done when they have to cover every page with washi tape and colour everything in I don’t know. But then I came across this post The Lazy Genius (I even love the title), wherein she says these magic words..

“I encourage you to not look for other examples of Bullet Journaling, not just yet. Why? Because there are people who doll their pages up beautifully with washi tape, calligraphy, stamps, intricate doodles, and everything else that makes your heart beat fast at the craft store. They’re color-coordinated with tabs and labels, and there are so many pages to choose from, it’s like a scary organizational buffet.

Those journals are beautiful without question. But remember when I said trial and error taught me to keep my Bullet Journal simple? That’s because I went through three – yeah, THREE – different journals because I kept getting frustrated and starting over. I couldn’t keep up with all the beauty I wanted to see on every page. My handwriting is boring, the only thing I can doodle is a wobbly spiral, and while I do have an impressive collection of washi tape, it just took too long to make every page pretty. I was dressing my journal for the Oscars when I live a Modern Family reruns life.”

That pretty much sums up life in general. We spend way too much time comparing ourselves, our children, our homes, our entire lives with other people. Meanwhile they are comparing their lives with yet more people. We make Compare the Market dot com look like a car boot sale.

Slow down and let the rest of them overtake you.

What is on your pinterest board (if you have one)? I cleared mine out recently and now it has things I want to do (practical ideas for converting a transit van into a camper van, no dreamy lifestyle photos but stuff I need to know); my herbal medicine references; low tox living references. Yes, there are ideas for the garden and our home, but not pictures of stuff or places we are never going to achieve with quotes like “oh in my dreams”, or “one day I am going to live here”. Aspiration is good, but only if it makes you feel good, not if it means that you spend your life, your actual life, aspiring to another life, and whoops… you have missed your own life.

When I led happiness workshops I would give everyone a small pretty notebook and some pens and ask them to fill the first page with stuff that made them happy, words, pictures whatever. NOBODY could co it. They didn’t want to spoil the book. Then I took a big black permanent marker and said they had 10 minutes or I would scribble all over the first page. Most people grabbed their notebook and clasped it to their chest. My analogy was that notebook is your life, if you are scared to make a mistake because you want it to be perfect then you will never life your life but spend it waiting for perfection.

Perfection doesn’t exist. Beauty is in the imperfection. Look at this perfectly symmetrical faces are not more beautiful than our natural imbalanced ones. The Japanese (always spot on with observations) even have a name for it. Wabi-Sabi ..

The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” (Leonard Koren)

Fill up those beautiful notebooks you have on your shelves, if you have to cross out a mistake, cross it out. Live you life with all its imperfections and revel in the beauty that is not perfect.

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2 thoughts on “is pinterest ruining your life?”

Great post! It took me a long time to realise what you have put so well, I think it even applies to new purchases, once they are scuffed or marked in some way we can all relax and stop stressing about them not being perfect. Once something is imperfect we can let the ideal of perfection go.